Strangers No More!

Text: Ephesians 2:11-22

Theme:  “Strangers No More”

8^th Sunday after Pentecost

July 19, 2015

FIRST PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH

Denton, Texas

Rev. Paul R. Dunklau

+In the Name of Jesus+

11 Therefore, remember that formerly you who are Gentiles by birth and called “uncircumcised” by those who call themselves “the circumcision” (which is done in the body by human hands)— 12 remember that at that time you were separate from Christ, excluded from citizenship in Israel and foreigners to the covenants of the promise, without hope and without God in the world. 13 But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far away have been brought near by the blood of Christ.

14 For he himself is our peace, who has made the two groups one and has destroyed the barrier, the dividing wall of hostility, 15 by setting aside in his flesh the law with its commands and regulations. His purpose was to create in himself one new humanity out of the two, thus making peace, 16 and in one body to reconcile both of them to God through the cross, by which he put to death their hostility. 17 He came and preached peace to you who were far away and peace to those who were near. 18 For through him we both have access to the Father by one Spirit.

19 Consequently, you are no longer foreigners and strangers, but fellow citizens with God’s people and also members of his household, 20 built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, with Christ Jesus himself as the chief cornerstone. 21 In him the whole building is joined together and rises to become a holy temple in the Lord. 22 And in him you too are being built together to become a dwelling in which God lives by his Spirit.

“Take up your cross and follow me,” says Jesus Christ.  Those words prompted a late 1980s, early 1990s sermon I delivered with the following title:  “Do You Wear the Cross or Bear the Cross?”  I recall mentioning how easy it is to wear the cross as jewelry – as you would with a necklace or something similar, but how difficult it is to bear the cross as Jesus bids us do. 

In the congregation that day was a gentleman who at one time served on the administrative staff of a state penitentiary in Indiana. 

A week or so later, he called and invited me to share the same message about wearing or bearing the cross at his place of employment.  I agreed to do so.   There was a church inside the prison called the CBO:  the Christian Brotherhood Organization.  Little did I know, I would have to go through, if memory serves, three different security checks before I was let in to where the group gathered for worship and Bible study.

Nervously, I gave my talk.  Like most of my sermons, then and now, I thought it bombed.  But afterward, one of the inmates came up to me and thanked me for being there.  He mentioned in passing that he was there in the penitentiary “for three days.”  I said, “That’s great; you’re about to be released.”  He replied:  “Oh, you don’t know prison lingo.”  Then, with an icy stare that all but looked directly into my soul, he said, “Around here, three days means three life terms.”  I’ll never forget that.

I hear the train a comin'

It's rollin' 'round the bend,

And I ain't seen the sunshine

Since, I don't know when

I'm stuck in Folsom Prison

And time keeps draggin' on

But that train keeps a-rollin'

On down to San Antone

Those are the words of the “Man in Black”, himself a one time inmate, the late singer/songwriter Johnny Cash.  As I’m sure you know, unforgettable things have been said and written by people who have been in prison – be it fairly or unfairly.  Just this past week, for the first time in American history, an American president visited a prison. 

As I thought about this, I remembered Alexandr Solzhenitsyn and his Gulag Archipelago.  Then there’s Martin Luther King, Jr. and his Letter from A Birmingham Jail.  Consider Nelson Mandela as well.  The Christian community will surely recall the Rev. Prof. Dietrich Bonhoeffer who was executed by the Nazis at Flossenburg prison in the last days of the Third Reich.  His Letters and Papers from Prison – including material both from his last days in Flossenburg to the time spent earlier in the Berlin city lock-up -- are required reading in some seminary courses.  Martin Luther himself, in the sixteenth century, was whisked away to a castle.  His friends feared for his life during those heady, early days of the Reformation.  He felt imprisoned, but Luther didn’t sit around twiddling thumbs.  He was quite prodigious and prolific in those days.

St. Paul didn’t twiddle thumbs either in his letter to the Ephesians (a portion of which is our New Testament reading). Instead, he fired off a letter; he wrote an epistle.  He addressed it to the Ephesians.   In 3:1, he says he’s a “prisoner” of Christ Jesus for the sake of the Gentiles.  4:1 declares:  “As a prisoner for the Lord, then, I urge you to live a life worthy of the calling you have received.”  If that weren’t enough, there’s 6:19b-20a:  “I will fearlessly make known the mystery of the gospel, for which I am an ambassador in chains.” 

If you get the idea that he was in prison, you get it right.  The location was most likely Rome where he was imprisoned but given some measure of freedom.  It was sort of a house arrest. 

Now the Christians at the church in Ephesus were not under house arrest like Paul.   They weren’t a persecuted minority as Christians today, in that part of the world, find themselves to be.   They were residents of one of the great economic cities in the time of the New Testament.  There is evidence of religion:  a temple to the Roman goddess Diana was built there.  There are indications of higher education.  In addition, Ephesus (which was in present-day Turkey) was one of those bustling towns where trade routes converged.  A few trade routes converge here in the I35 corridor, don’t they?  Likewise, we, too, have religion – quite a bit of it! – represented here at the northern point of the “Golden Triangle”.  What of higher education?  UNT and TWU are exhibits A & B. 

My point is that ancient Ephesus and modern Denton have similarities.  Obviously, we know a little bit more about Denton than Ephesus.  But did you know, for instance, that Denton County is ranked last in the state for mental health care services support?  Did you know that Texas is ranked 49^th in the country for mental health care services support?  I have observed that we cannot seem to garner tangible support for the mentally ill and the addicted (who are often impoverished, homeless, and without transportation); the political will is simply not there, or not yet there.   But we certainly are able to help front up multi-million dollar expansions to the county jail.  Take a look next time you drive down Colorado Blvd.  We’ve heard about the military/industrial complex; that’s been around since Eisenhower.  Perhaps it’s time to start talking about the prison/industrial complex. 

You certainly see it in the sheer volume of cars on the road.  What does that volume tell me?  We have population growth.  Certainly, the Denton Chamber of Commerce would cheer this – for the economic upside that it represents.  But there’s a dark side to the upside:  urban blight often gives way to suburban flight.  We get the feeling that we’re not quite as safe as we once were in our Currier and Ives, Norman Rockwell-esque hometown.   There is rage on the road.  Nerves are jangled. Tempers can flare.  People act out distractedly, aggressively – and, often, passive-aggressively. Requests for help from our Inasmuch Fund come nearly on a daily basis.  Ours is a confused, unsettling, and increasingly desperate time where we are long on diagnosis and woefully short on cure.   

The temptation is to take counsel of our fears.  But that’s an uncomfortable exercise, so we take counsel with whatever it is that makes us feel better.  Gratification doesn’t amount to much if it’s not instant.   We party ourselves, drug ourselves, fool ourselves into thinking it’s all going to be okay.  Positive thinking, as Barbara Ehrenreich has pointed out in her book, is all but the American Creed.  Even religion becomes a crutch; piety becomes a crutch; choreographed spiritual emotionalism becomes a crutch.  Now we observe that our millennial children have abandoned these crutches, and we sit and scratch our collective heads. 

Yet when these crutches are removed, when we ourselves experience those spiritual, cultural, fearful, and even physical hangovers, we isolate ourselves and call it solitude; instead of taking time to trust and talk, we plug in our earbuds; we confuse serenity with security; we run away from the fullness of life and call it a “coping mechanism”.  We hurry up to reassure ourselves that we are fine, friendly, kind, generous, upstanding, tax-paying, law-abiding, moral people and all of that.  Why, we’ve given our hearts to Jesus, our time to Jesus, and our money too.  We’re the committed ones – and not like the growing number of lollygaggers in our society.  But even these things we tell ourselves – which can be true to a greater or lesser degree -- are no guarantee.  As Horrigan said to Leary – or, if you prefer, as Eastwood said to Malkovich – in In the Line of Fire:  “What do you see in the dark when the demons come?”

I see loneliness; I see fear; I see emptiness, listlessness, malaise, torpor, and desperation. I see myself as a stranger in my own life.  What possible good can some two thousand year old apostle– who was in a prison, for crying out loud! – do to exorcise my demons?

What he does is make a declaration.  He did it then, and he does it now.  What is now was then.  What was then is now.  And his declaration, riding on the currents of God the Holy Spirit, is this:  You’re not a stranger; you’re not a foreigner.  You’re not an isolated little bit leftover after life atomized your soul. 

You’re a fellow citizen with God’s people.  You’re a member of God’s household.  You’re built on the foundation with your brother and Redeemer, Jesus Christ, being the chief cornerstone.

The Law of God segregates; the Gospel of God integrates.  If it’s all about the law, then keep it perfectly and you’ll be fine.  But who of us has done that?  And if we keep living in the Law way and not the Gospel way, in the old covenant and not the new covenant way, should it really come as a surprise to us that we feel like strangers in our own lives?  The Law segregates, isolates, atomizes; it will crush you.

It is the Gospel that integrates. It is the Gospel that makes of you a new creation.  It is the Gospel that delivers Jesus Christ, who, as the imprisoned apostle said, destroyed the barrier, wiped out the hostility, abolished in his own flesh the law with its regulations.  He came to create in Himself a new humanity where we are strangers no more.

I can’t get over the irony, and I hope I never do.  This good, grand, glorious, freedom-giving , new humanity creating, hope generating news, this Gospel, was delivered by a man in prison.

Amen.